


Irrational Treasure - Part One

by strangeispowerful



Series: ~*Superpowers AU Oneshots*~ [6]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen, Just a reference to national treasure, Multi, Not a reference to gravity falls, One Shot Collection, Rated teen for language, Zoe Murphy & Jared Kleinman friendship, Zoe finds a treasure map (?), powers au, which is an amazing movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:27:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24392764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeispowerful/pseuds/strangeispowerful
Summary: Zoe’s sitting with her knees on the sparkly red vinyl of the booth, staring at the piece of paper on the table that’s framed between her fists. She hasn’t moved in a few minutes, and has no plans of ever moving until Jared peeks his face over the paper to look up at her. “What do you actually think it is? A treasure map?”He’s being sarcastic, but… maybe she does think that that’s what it is. It couldn’t be more clear! A huge red X? Tansy Creek itself is on the paper, a wavy line of watercolor, labeled with water-smeared ink. There are fancy embellishments all along the sides, and the paper is crumpled and old-looking. It’s obviously a map. Though some of the lines are half drawn, incomplete.Or: The Gang goes on an adventure to n o t steal the Declaration of Independence. Part one.
Relationships: Connor Murphy & Zoe Murphy, Evan Hansen & Jared Kleinman, Evan Hansen & Zoe Murphy, Jared Kleinman & Zoe Murphy, Zoe Murphy & Alana Beck
Series: ~*Superpowers AU Oneshots*~ [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1750975
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Irrational Treasure - Part One

**Author's Note:**

> This is less of a character study as the other ones are, and more of a situational one shot. Had this idea and thought it'd be cute~

The diner on Victoria Street, Adelaide’s _,_ acts more like a home base than a restaurant, even if it does have amazing food.

It’s a lot easier to meet up somewhere that’s not somebody’s house, especially when the Murphy’s is constantly wracked with the sounds of door-slamming, arguing, or  _ fuck-you- _ ing. Stuff like that always makes Zoe feel like she’s the cause of the awkward silence, and therefore, their place is a definite no.

Jared’s is incredibly small. From what he’s told her, he’s lived here in Tansy Creek for most of his life with his dad; his mom works a corporate position in the city, and isn’t home often, but when she does come, Zoe always tries to see her before she leaves again. She thinks that his mom is the nicest person that she’s ever met, though she’s really protective of Jared when she’s home. That’s probably where he gets it, and probably why he always tries to be as reckless as possible in her absence.

Both of Alana’s parents work from home, so their loudness would definitely not be tolerated. Evan’s house would be a great donor, but…

Adelaide’s has pie. So it’s the obvious choice. 

Zoe’s sitting with her knees on the sparkly red vinyl of the booth, staring at the piece of paper on the table that’s framed between her fists. She hasn’t moved in a few minutes, and has no plans of  _ ever  _ moving until Jared peeks his face over the paper to look up at her.

“You should probably eat your food,” he says. “It came like, thirty minutes ago.”

She waves him off and makes a dismissive sound, balancing back on her heels. “I’m trying to make sense of this…”

“Sense of what?” Alana has her camera pointed out of the window and her eye at the viewfinder. “It’s probably someone’s school project.”

“Who would put this much work into a school project?” Zoe says, distracted and completely oblivious to the bemused look that Alana—who absolutely would put that much work into a school project, she knows—shoots her. “It just… seems like more.”

“Not everything is magic and destiny, Zo.” She looks up to see Connor, coming back from the bathroom and wincing at the fact that she’s still examining the paper.

She squints. That’s just like him. “Oh yeah? And you know this  _ how…?” _

“War,” he shrugs.

“Science,” Alana adds.

Jared grins. “The internet?”

Evan, who’s sitting in between Zoe and the window and has been scribbling in a notebook for the entirety of their lunch, says without breaking eye contact with the page, “None of that means that magic isn't real. Or fate. How do you think we all found each other?”

Zoe gives Connor a defiant look. “See? Thank you, Evan.” It did feel like fate when she and Alana had found the paper, half-disintegrated with water and crumpled up in the corner of one of the maintenance tunnels under the park that they sometimes walk through, where they can talk without anyone else hearing. The red ink had caught her attention. More specifically, the huge red ‘X’.

“What do you actually think it is?” Jared scootches right up next to Zoe, and she pushes him right back. “A treasure map?” 

He’s being sarcastic, but… maybe she _ does  _ think that that’s what it is. It couldn’t be more clear! A huge red X? Tansy Creek itself is on the paper, a wavy line of watercolor, labeled with water-smeared ink. There are fancy embellishments all along the sides, and the paper is crumpled and old-looking. It’s obviously a map. Though some of the lines are half drawn, incomplete. The area with the ‘X’ is completely blank. She takes a sip of cream soda instead of answering, her sandwich untouched.

“I think if there’s some sort of secret treasure in Tansy Creek, we would’ve found it by now,” Connor shrugs. “All of that running in the backwoods? Getting bit up by mosquitos?”

“Oh, God,” Evan groans. “Remember the summer after sophomore year?”

“Shit!” Jared barks a laugh. “When you knocked down the whole power grid?” He nudges Zoe, who gets off of her knees and settles cross-legged into the seat, her tennis shoes squeaking on the vinyl. It was true. The summer after they’d all  _ really  _ become friends, the others had come over to Zoe and Connor’s house. The forest is basically right in their backyard, and they’d spent the day walking until they were deep enough in it that they could mess with their affinities without anyone seeing.

Connor had sat there, doing nothing, not wanting to start a forest fire. And Jared had sat there too. She’d felt bad about that, and she still does. Feels bad that she didn’t say anything to him. She was too busy letting all of the pent up electricity race across her skin. She may have accidentally called up a rainstorm, too.

Around the borders to the town, they’d found one of the transmission towers, power lines reaching into the downtown area. And Zoe had… well. You can guess what a just-graduated freshman with the ability to manipulate electricity would do. 

She rolls her eyes. “That was an accident.”

Jared takes one of Zoe’s fries. “And also fucking genius, by the way, if I haven’t said it before. With all the streetlights out, your mom wouldn’t let any of our parents come and get us from your house. That night was…”

“Painful.” Alana shakes her head. “While you were getting high on soda and candy, I was working on that exam for my summer physics course…”

Connor raises an eyebrow. “Getting high? It’s not like we were snorting Smarties.”

“Questionable,” Evan shrugs, and Jared laughs. That’s one of the things Zoe likes most about Evan; he’s usually not the one who talks most in a conversation, but when he does contribute, it always holds just enough weight to make the exchange feel  _ real.  _ She doesn’t really know how to explain it. 

“Snorting isn’t really his style,” Jared says, and Alana cocks her head, her face reading  _ debatable _ , still pointing the camera out the window. “But smoking…”

“Okay, okay, I get it, yeah,” Connor scoffs, shaking his head. “You’re despicable.”

Jared shoots a pair of finger guns in his direction and grins the kind of smile that makes Connor’s face scrunch up so that it perfectly conveys ‘you really are an idiot’.

“ _ Wait, wait!”  _ Zoe suddenly slams her hands down on the table, the dishes rattling. “I got it!” She grabs the paper and holds it up to the light of the window, waiting for the incomplete parts of the map to fade in. Nothing happens.

“Why did you think that would work…?” Connor asks dryly, and she sticks her tongue out at him. Very mature, she knows.

Meanwhile, Alana has put her camera down and pushed the plate with the sandwich on it toward Zoe. “You can’t think on an empty stomach.”

Jared turns. “I swear, if you made me pay for that sandwich for nothing…”

“Oh, so you’re my mom now?”

He lifts his brows. “Proudly. Now eat, bitch.”

She takes a fry and throws it at him, and he gives her a challenging look. Looking back at the map—piece of paper—in front of her, she lets her mind wander for a second. It’s probably a map that some student made, but even if it is, it’d still be interesting to find out whatever they hid. Intriguing. And besides, she has nothing else to do. It’s way too hot to go biking, and the lake nearby is closed because someone had hid cocaine under one of the park benches.

Things get crazy in Tansy Creek in the summertime. The town is only so big, and once people run out of things to do, they go stir crazy. There have been attempted robberies, drug deals. There was a homicide case that happened, but Zoe was way too young to remember it. Luckily, none of it ever has anything to do with them or their affinities. Usually, they just live their lives. 

It’s hard to have secrets in a small town, and dangerous. They used to have rules, but when you’re a kid with a phenomenal ability,  _ don’t use your powers at all  _ turns into  _ don’t use your powers in _ public real quick _.  _ Besides. What’s the worst that could even happen? People here are skeptics. Most of them don’t believe that  _ climate change _ is real. They’d probably just write off any sightings of her or her friends’ powers as a trick of the light. 

She glares at the paper, crackly from water damage, and reaches across the table to steal one of Connor’s onion rings, who yells out in protest. 

“Zoe, I will  _ cut you—,” _

“Hold on,” she says, chewing slowly. “Look at this.”

She presses a finger to the page, and Jared leans over to look. Evan puts down the notebook and rests his elbows on the table, looking tired. 

A moment passes, and Jared says, “...what am I looking at?”

She moves her finger and leans in close. “There’s a star here. Look! It’s all smeared because of the water.” 

“That looks like a tree,” says Evan. “Look, it has the same line work as all of the others.”

“No, no. Not that. Next to it. It’s a star!”

Alana just shakes her head. “Listen, it probably isn’t even a big deal, Zo. It’s cool that we found it, but…” She shrugs. 

But Jared’s leaned in closer and adjusted his glasses, and he murmurs “ _ Holy shit.”  _ He looks up at Zoe, who’s now grinning because she _ knows  _ that she’s not crazy. “It  _ is _ a star.”

“There’s no fucking star!” Connor protests and snatches the paper off of the table, holding it about an inch from his face. It’s quiet. Zoe squints at him, and Jared eats a fry. And then Connor says, “Oh.”

Zoe tilts her head triumphantly. “Now give it back before you set it on fire. Where is this? By all the trees. It’s north of Tansy Creek.” She looks at the paper, feeling fizzy and excited. For someone who reads fantasy so much, you’d think that it’d be easier for her to find adventure, but it’s painfully elusive. And now, here one is, staring her in the face! Or, well. Maybe not an adventure. Definitely an afternoon.

“Let me see it?” She hands the paper to Alana, who flinches when their hands touch. 

Zoe feels the tiny shock and grimaces. “Sorry.” She moves to sit on her hands; she can feel her hair frizzing up. But it could just be the humidity.

Alana frowns. “This looks like where the aquarium is. See the little dent in the trees?” She sets the map down, checking to make sure that no water has spilt on the table first. “That’s Walnut Street.”

“So, what, it’s in the middle of the road?” Jared says, fries momentarily abandoned. 

Evan looks up. “The Public Library is on that street.”

Zoe considers, looks at him. “The Public Library. The  _ library!” _

Alana puts the camera into the bag at her side and crosses her arms. “You think there’s something there? That has to do with this paper.”

“See how it’s incomplete? What if it has the other piece?”

“We’re going, right?” Jared says. “Don’t say no, I’m invested now.”

“As long as I can bring my sandwich.”

“We’re actually doing this?” Evan asks, taking a sip from the bottle of water he has. “Is this what we’re doing today?”

“That, or melt in the heat.”

“It’s still hot out,” Alana says, cleaning her glasses. “Treasure hunting—or whatever this is—doesn’t change that.”

Jared presses his lips together dubiously. “Right. Well, then, melt in the heat, or melt in the heat while searching for  _ treasure.” _

Zoe’s tying her hair up. “You in, Connor?”

He groans. “Do I have a choice?”

“This is not how I expected to spend my day off,” Evan says, and Alana nods in agreement.

“I have to go in at four.” Jared finishes the fries and pushes the plate away to lean on the table. “So we have to keep it quick.”

“We’re doing this!” Zoe carefully rolls up the map and nods. “And no. You don’t have a choice.”

**Author's Note:**

> My DEH vinyl came! I'm very happy rn  
> To be continued, of course! In the meantime, check out the other one-shots of this au!   
> If you wish, leave a kudos and/or a comment, and I will answer any of your (not so burning I assume) questions! A million times thank you for the continuous positivity!


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